10:00 PM - DSA Temporary Command Center, Mumbai
The old man's body was covered with a white sheet. The air in the medical tent was thick with the smell of antiseptic and failure.
"He's gone," the doctor confirmed, his face grim. "No physical cause. It's as if his consciousness just... switched off."
Riya stared at the body, her mind replaying the man's final words. "The key turns in the lock. The serpent watches." A warning? A prophecy?
Arav was already at a portable console, his fingers flying across the holographic interface. "They're in my code," he muttered, his voice tight with a mixture of fury and fear. "The Dreamcatcher's architecture... they've woven their own commands into the base programming."
He pulled up a complex web of code, highlighting sections that pulsed with a faint silver light—the same shade as the serpent in the symbol. "These weren't here before. They've added them remotely. It's like they had a backdoor built in from the very beginning."
Riya joined him, her eyes scanning the corrupted code. "Can you remove it?"
"I don't know," Arav admitted, running a hand through his hair. "It's deeply embedded. Trying to remove it might crash the entire system. Or worse, give them full access."
Their private comms buzzed simultaneously. Another encrypted message. This one contained no text—only an audio file.
Riya played it. A distorted voice, genderless and cold, filled the air.
"Architect. You build beautiful cages. Join us. Fulfill your destiny. Refuse, and we will demonstrate what happens when dreams become prisons."
The message ended with the sound of a key turning in a lock.
11:30 PM - The Safe House
They had retreated to a CIB safe house—a modest apartment in a non-descript building. The paranoia was setting in. If these people could infiltrate the Dreamcatcher's code, what else could they access?
Ankit was running diagnostics on all their systems back in Delhi. "So far, everything else is clean," his hologram reported. "But if I were them, I'd have multiple entry points."
Riya paced the small living room. "They called you 'Architect.' They know you built the Dreamcatcher. This is personal."
Arav sat on the floor, surrounded by code projections. "They didn't just find my blueprints. They understand my design philosophy. The way they've integrated their commands... it's elegant. Brutal, but elegant. They're not just hackers. They're artists, like Lina said."
He looked up at Riya, his expression haunted. "What if they're right? What if the Dreamcatcher was always meant for more than just stealing secrets? What if I unconsciously built it for this?"
"Don't," Riya said sharply, stopping her pacing to kneel in front of him. "Don't let them into your head like that. You built a tool. They're the ones twisting it into a weapon."
1:15 AM - The Pattern Emerges
Arav had been cross-referencing the Frozen incident with every database he could securely access. A pattern was emerging, subtle but undeniable.
"Look," he said, pulling up a map of Mumbai. Red dots marked the locations of the Frozen. "They're not random. They form a spiral pattern, centered on the old Jain temple in Walkeshwar."
Riya leaned in, her brow furrowed. "A spiral? What does that mean?"
"It's a symbol. An ancient one. Representing consciousness, journey, evolution." Arav's eyes widened as a new thought struck him. "The Kaleidoscope. It's not just a project name. It's a literal description. They're rearranging patterns of consciousness. Testing different configurations."
He pulled up the brainwave scans of the Frozen victims. "See these subtle variations? Each victim is experiencing a slightly different state. Some are in pure bliss. Others in terror. They're running experiments. The public demonstration was just a side effect."
Riya's blood ran cold. "They're mapping the human psyche. But for what?"
The answer came from an unexpected source. Ankit's hologram flickered back to life, his face pale.
"Bosses," he said, his voice trembling. "I dug deeper into the financial records we recovered from Verma's lab. He wasn't funding Project Chimera alone. He had a silent partner. The money was funneled through dozens of shell corporations, but I managed to trace the source."
He projected a document on the wall. It was a transaction record, dated eight years ago—two weeks before Riya's father died. The payment was massive, and the recipient was listed as "Kaleidoscope Initiative."
The sender's name made Riya's legs give way. She collapsed into a chair, staring at the name in disbelief.
It was her father's CIB pension fund.
"He was funding them?" she whispered, the world tilting around her. "But... they killed him."
"Or," Arav said softly, his eyes filled with pity, "he was one of them. Maybe he tried to back out. Maybe that's why he died."
The foundation of Riya's world—the belief in her father's heroism—cracked. And through the cracks, the serpent stared back.